it is great! It is less than I paid on my plan when I had a Sony Ericsson w810i. The UNLIMITED internet access plus 200 text for $20 a month is a great price. I don’t think you can beat that in the US. That’s $60 a month. The cheapest similar plan with Verizon is $80.

Oh yeah. I’m also a happy 8gb iPhone owner

Dude, pick up on the sarcasm….

phone plans are a different thing altogether. Without a phone plan, your phone is useless. You will be paying “subsidies” as long as you have a phone. BTW, you know you can unlock the iPhone with a simple downloadable app. Or did you not know that?

As I’ve said before, my convergence devices of choice come from Nokia (and sadly they’re not as well represented in the US as they are in Europe or Asia), and for music players I’d choose Sony, if only I needed that now. They’re both great companies, have excellent support, but I only had to call them up once, as their products didn’t just break down.

Apple has a very simple interface, and simple designs. They appeal to many non-techi because of that, and I have nothing against it. It’s cool. But for a gadget/tech fan, it’s unsatisfactory. And for power users too.

I’m calling Jobs a BSer only and only because he pipes up calling most features ‘revolutionary’ ‘never-seen-before’ ‘innovative’ and so on… Sadly, most if not all of them have already been featured quite a while ago in other devices.

Design-wise, Apple’s kinda going down in my humble opinion… iPods are just boxes with a circle and a screen, and the new iMacs don’t appeal to me like they did at the first generation. Sony has a new Vaio all-in-one that looks far better than the Apple. The iPhone looks good. Really. But I could not stand having a smartphone that has so many locked features and doesn’t even have a real keyboard. I love mine (nokia e70).. but in the US it lacks 3G and isn’t loved because it’s ugly.

I thought that the iPhone getting cheaper was good news, really..

And, as an endnote, YES, jobs is an EXCELLENT salesman. But without the lies he wouldn’t be as good as he is now…

I’ve just stumbled upon a feature comparison put in a nice way: http://www.youtube.com/user/Rcadden

Apple has top notch customer support and their devices are not only beautiful, but a pleasure to use and that’s why they dominate the MP3 player market and soon the smartphone market. Say what you will about the iPhone, but it’s a hell of a lot smarter than the Treo I had a few months ago.

Interesting question, though – who is going to go to Chinatown or a shady internet dealer during the upcoming holiday season and buy a PMP from some Asian country? What happens when it breaks and there’s no one to go to for support? Why not just buy similar technology from a reputable company where the customer service is excellent?

I’ll admit that Apple has its flaws, like the iPhone price cut announcement only 2 months after people bought their iPhones, or the fact that there’s a new and better version of a product only a few months after the first one is released. I also would have liked a radio in the new iPod/iPhone because I do listen to the radio when I’m sick of listening to my iPod.

If you hate Apple, fine. You’re allowed to have your opinions, but the average consumer is going to buy what works and what has worked for the past 5 years. Your little tirade against the keynote, as unneeded as it was, isn’t going to bring down Apple, nor do I think that was your intention. The problem with your “review” was that your bias came out first, then your comments. You either prefaced the few good things that they announced with something negative, or you followed the good things with something negative. It’s ok to say, “you know what, the product is good, but it could have used more this/less that,” instead of, “The iPod has good battery life, now here’s a laundry list of reasons why it sucks.”

The problem with a lot of Tech Fanboys is that they are impossible to please. Sure, the Chinese PMP has all this stuff the iPod doesn’t, but when you finally get your hands on it, you find something better to compare it to and then automatically it’s complete crap.

I like Coolest Gadgets – they make me aware of some pretty cool stuff – but your article looked like something that should have come from the depths of a CNet comments section.

As a nano alternative? take this one for example. http://www.meizume.com/showthread.php?t=3291 . A friend has an older version, and even that one has good build quality, a good battery and sounds a tad better than the iPods. If you want great sound quality, even a Nokia phone delivers that, but I’d suggest you looked towards Sony.

Speaking of Nokia, no, I haven’t got iPod blues, and no Zune. For media I use a good old smartphone (as in TRUE smartphone, not iPhone) with a 4gig card. It plays high quality music in ANY format, and fullscreen videos on a 352 x 416 pixels 2,1 inch screen (nice density, huh?). The battery life is better than the iPhones, it really has features, it has a better internet browser, and even a QWERTY keyboard.

For backups and file transfers I have an external hard drive, as big as an iPod but without the unneeded player, which I bought for $120. And it’s designed by Porsche, looks fabulous.

kboggs – yes, I hate jobs, because all he does is bullshit people. every new feature is ‘revolutionary’ to him, but it’s GUARANTEED to have been introduced a while ago by another company. He’s either one of the biggest bullshitters ever or totally ignorant to products other that his own. Look how a single man has managed to overtake Microsoft..

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I smilingly await your follow-ups

The Starbucks move you apparently haven’t looked into a whole lot, though. Considering that Google has confirmed that it will be releasing a gPhone, and that Google just bought a gigantic portion of the WiFi airspace, it’s actually a pretty smart move for Apple to have Starbucks offer iPhone and iPod Touch users wifi, especially since Starbucks has a bitch-ton of locations. It also allows Starbucks frequenters to get a hands on look at the iPod Touch and iPhone and what it can do with wifi (My friend actually works at Starbucks and they’ll be going through a 51 hour training course on using/demoing the iPhone and iPod Touch to aid users in connecting etcetera.)

The iPod Nanos are a bit ugly, but they have a beautiful screen (The resolution for such a small screen is intensely impressive) and are relatively cheap for the features included.

I’m not saying that I’m going to go out and buy any of these products (Especially since I’m a Linux user and gPhone will be running on a Linux based OS so I can actually sync the thing properly), but bad mouthing a company based on it’s want to make capital off of it’s users and what it’s users ask for is childish.

Expensive ringtones – Charging extra for ring tones sucks– no doubt. However, the decision to charge extra for ring tones most likely was driven by the record labels– not Apple. And by comparison, some other phones sevices charge $2.50 for a ring tone.

No Radio – The lack of a radio hasn’t stopped iPod from dominating the MP3 Player market. The beauty of the iPod is that it is like a radio that plays only music you like, and without commercial breaks. The 12 people that must have a radio can always buy Apple’s FM tuner/ remote control that connects in-line with the headphones.

The “ridiculously high capacity” (of the iPod Classic) – While it is rare that anyone would completely fill their 160GB iPod with music, all that extra space lets you carry a nice selection of movies, TV shows, music videos, photos, and audiobooks–good for long trips You can also declare a portion of the iPod’s hard disc for general use (file backup and transfer).

The Nano’s high price – Value is in the mind of the beholder. Show me a nicer screen in a device that small. If you care about video and photo qualty, the cost is justified. As you have noted, coverflow isn’t shabby either.

Apple isn’t perfect, but all in all they have been doing a good job of keeping the iPod line fresh and compelling.

Speaking as a true Fanboy, (I love that phrase, makes me feel young.) I think it was a pretty cool bunch of new products. The ring tone stuff is pretty lame but the iPod touch is very cool. I think the idea behind the huge disk capacities on the iPod classics is either to accommodate movies or when the iPod is used as storage. My 80GB has about 40GB of backups and other files.

Why bash apple for selling ringtones when others do the same? You pay $1.98 from Apple for a full song and ringtone. Verizon sells just the ringtone for $2.99.

There are lazy people everywhere who want things made for them. These people have money. Don’t knock companies for trying to make money off of them. Tmobile charges 1.99 for the instrumental version of songs and $2.50 for a clip of the real ones. But you are either ignorant of that (in which case, do a little research) or willfully misleading when you say: “That’s plain robbery.. Once you have the tune, why pay for cutting and adding effects?.. Well, it’s Apple, that’s why.”